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If you are a Goodreads user who like to reread your favorite books, here’s some good news: Goodreads had finally added a feature to track rereading a book. This has been a highly requested feature on the site (I’ve personally requested it on several occasions).

With the new feature, you can add a separate set of start and finish dates each time you re-read a book. The rereads also now count towards Reading Challenges as well.

The new feature was announced yesterday on the site’s blog and is in the process of rolling out to all users.

To see if you have the new feature, go to the page of a book you’ve read on Goodreads, click Edit in the My Activities section and scroll to the dates read section. It will say if the rereads are enabled. To use the feature, click the Add Read Date button. (See screenshot.)

If you have been keeping track of your rereads via the “Number of Times Read” option or by using different editions to track rereads, the system will automatically add those to the section. I am going to try adding them in after the fact, since I did not track rereads because I could not enter dates.

Since I have actually missed completing more than one yearly reading challenge because I couldn’t count rereads, I am really excited to see this feature implemented. How about you?

I got an email from Goodreads Deals today telling me that Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan was on sale for $1.99. My response was was not happiness, but a rush of anger and a complaint email to GR customer service. Since I had previously opted out of these notification emails, I was not a happy camper.

Granted, getting put on an email list I did not sign up for is one of my pet peeves. But a lot of my anger in this particular situation was because this is the second time that Goodreads has signed me up for a list that I did not want. The last time this happened, I also wrote an email complaining about their actions. Goodreads’ response to that email came across as uncaring – after all, as they explained, all I had to do was go into my account and change my settings. Never mind the fact that they sent me something that I did not want and had not signed up for.

After the last email, I specifically went into my listings and changed all my newsletter and mailing preferences to state that I did not want these kinds of email notifications.

When Goodreads started the Deals newsletter, the feature was supposed to be opt-in. This description is from May 20, 2016 in the The Verge:

Goodreads Deals is an opt-in feature that analyzes user data (looking at individuals’ favorite reads, authors, etc), before emailing out relevant ebooks when they go on sale. “If one of the authors you follow has a not-to-be-missed promotion on an ebook,” says the company in a blog post announcing the service. “We’ll make sure you don’t miss out.”

Just to be clear, opt-in means that the recipient has knowingly given you, the sender, permission to communicate with them via e-mail. An easy test to determine whether or not your e-mail is opt-in is to ask yourself if the recipient will be expecting to receive e-mail from you. If so, it’s opt-in. If not, it isn’t.

Was I expecting to get that email from Goodreads? Absolutely not. I had previously opted out in my email settings on my account and had even written them a complaint letter about unsolicited newsletter signups. So I had no reason to expect that I would receive this kind of an email from them and every reason to expect that I would not find something like this in my inbox.

That Click Z article goes on to note that it is not against CAN-SPAM rules to send opt-in emails. It’s not illegal, but it certainly is not best practice to do so. Goodreads privacy policy says that a user can opt-out from “email messages regarding updates, improvements, or offers.” It seems pretty apparent that while Goodreads Deals was originally promoted as opt-in, it has evidently become opt-out.

The insult-to-injury part was that I already own Altered Carbon. It is actually one of my all-time favorite books. So I wouldn’t have signed up to be notified about a book I already own. It seems pretty apparent that while Goodreads Deals may have originally been promoted as opt-in, in practice, it has evidently become opt-out.

I haven’t heard back from Goodreads yet, but after the unconcern expressed the last time I dealt with them on this issue, I am not expecting much from them other than being told I can, of course, opt-out. < /sarcasm> Of course, I have done that before and we see how far that got me….

I would advise checking your Goodreads settings. And, if you don’t want to receive these kinds of emails, I suggest that you specifically opt out of the deal emails. To do so, go to Account Settings>Deals and uncheck all the boxes.